Gen. Vallely: House Intel Benghazi Report 'Completely Debunked'

A week after blasting the House Intelligence Committee as "complicit in the cover-up" of events surrounding the 2012 Benghazi attack, retired Army Major Gen. Paul Vallely told Newsmax TV on Monday that the Republican-led panel's latest findings have already been"completely debunked."

In an interview with "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, Vallely said that a new study from the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi shows a House Intelligence report on the attack to be "a complete whitewash" of U.S. officials' "complicity" in burying failures that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stephens.

The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Mike Rogers, issued a report on Nov. 21 concluding that the CIA, the military and Obama administration officials were not to blame for the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2012 assault on the lightly guarded embassy annex in Benghazi, Libya.

The report — the latest of several Benghazi inquiries to criticize security lapses at the compound but find no high-level wrongdoing — was promptly denounced as "full of crap" by Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican and Senate Armed Services Committee member.

Vallely and other critics have charged Rogers with ignoring evidence that officials — going into damage-control mode weeks before a presidential election — sought to cover up failures to anticipate, guard against and ultimately repel a deadly terrorist attack carried out on a 9/11 anniversary.

"So we've got to press onward, get to the truth," said Vallely, a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a group of senior retired generals and admirals as well as former CIA and Defense Department officials demanding a fuller accounting of the incident.

Vallely said it falls to Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Benghazi Committee, to correct the record.

"There's three parts to the whole thing: It's the before the attack, during the attack, and after the attack," said Vallely, Military Committee Chairman of the Center for Security Policy.

He cited "the lies and deceptions that have been put out there by members of the Obama administration … when they said we didn't have the assets in the area to even conduct a rescue operation, when in fact we did.

"And we've interrogated and interviewed many witnesses or active-duty members in the Mediterranean at that time," Vallely said of the Citizens Commission. "So the truth has not come out yet, and that's why Trey Gowdy must get to the truth and explain to the American people what were the failures throughout those three phases that I just talked about. We have the witnesses to validate it."

He said he is angered by calls for people to let go of the much-investigated incident, or to apologize for continuing to press the case.

"If you read the book, '13 Hours' — when you had the [security] contractors there at the annex validating that they did get some 'don't move forward; stand down' order — it makes all of us angry because no rescue operation was even attempted," said Vallely.

A week after blasting the House Intelligence Committee as "complicit in the cover-up" of events surrounding the 2012 Benghazi attack, retired Army Major Gen. Paul Vallely told Newsmax TV on Monday that the Republican-led panel's latest findings have already been "completely debunked."